Nihilism

Now that you read the previous chapter, Status, let us switch
gears. Time to abandon the ironic tone and the hyperboles. On
with some analysis. While Status raises valid points, it
obscures them in nihilism. The reader is not drawn to the
arguments but to the overall negativity.

Nihilism can be understood as a way of interpreting phenomena
that is characterised by the following connatural tropes:

Binary thinking. Everything is parsed through a rigid
duality with no space for permeations or permutations in
between the extremes.

Forced homogenisation. To fit into the mould of perfectly
symmetrical extremes, all things must be brought under a
common denominator. Conceptual uniformity makes blanket
statements possible.

Juxtaposition between the actual and the ideal. Actuality
is compared to some ideal, only to be found wanting. The
ideal is, by definition, perfect. Reality is not. Which
results in a cycle of self fulfilling negativity.

The approach in Status conforms with these. There is no
nuance. The possibility of there being combinations of positive
and negative elements—with “positive” and “negative” being
relative to the benchmark used—is dismissed at the outset. The
topic under discussion is presented in overly broad terms, so as
to treat it as monolithic. That makes it possible to pass
general judgements about it. And, true to nihilism, the
overarching pessimism is the end product of deep seated, yet
misplaced idealism. Things are not perfect, therefore, the
rationale is, they are absolutely terrible.

For instance, consider Status’ statements against society’s
hypocrisy. Do they concern the entirety of society, some average,
a select few? Are they about everything society does, some
aspects of collective experience, or certain special cases? And
then, is this supposed hypocrisy contingent on circumstances that
condition the behaviour of situational agents and patients? Can
there be instances where it is not present? Furthermore, is it
true hypocrisy or a form of social convention which remains
consistent throughout and is not misunderstood by the members of
the social whole as something entirely different than what it is
supposed to be?

Nihilism adopts a scorched earth approach. All or nothing, which
all too often means just the latter. As such, the nihilist may
be starting from a sound or seemingly innocuous principle, say a
lofty ideal, only to ultimately work against it.

The nihilist inevitably becomes dogmatic. For that is what the
defence of an absolute system of normative claims on reality
entails. They work backwards from a conclusion. This is to be
contrasted with ideals that derive from inquiry into the
commonalities among the multitude of phenomena. The patterns,
the abstract structure. The nihilist’s ideals are preconceived
notions that are forced upon reality. And the nihilistic
outburst is the expression of the inner realisation of the
conflict between one’s view of the world as it ought to be and
the world as it actually is and can be.

From a political perspective, the nihilist has no direct
contribution to make. Extreme idealism can, at best, only keep a
fringe group focused on a narrowly defined task or utopia as an
opposition force that will never be in a position to implement
its view. Ideals are not implementable as such. Nihilism is the
opposite of the capacity to govern, as that presupposes the kind
of practicality that recognises the complexity of things, their
heterogeneity, and the possibility of incremental reforms that
add up to a bigger change. As such, the nihilist is actually
struggling between all that is ideal and nothing that is real.
Which leaves them with the latter.

As for the theme of this book, human’s self worth, the nihilist
unwittingly becomes the agent of the most extreme form of human
exceptionalism. This is typical among those who harbour nothing
but contempt for the world, as discussed in the first chapter of
this book. Now consider a less obvious example to reinforce the
point: the misguided Malthusian ecologist who truly believes that
the planet’s only hope is for humanity to go extinct. They are
assuming that they are the most enlightened of the species, both
because they are not preoccupied with their own survival, as all
living things, and due to humanity’s ostensibly unique inability
to adapt to evolving circumstances. Furthermore, they commit the
error of every other theory that subscribes to the concept of the
decontextualised human. Humanity can be removed from the
ecosystem and everything else will remain in tact. That is the
claim that humans are not inextricably bound up together with the
rest of the ecosystem. Which is a weird view, to say the least,
when it is well known that removing any one of the species from
its ecosystem will disturb the local equilibrium, often with
far-reaching ramifications. This is where the dogmatic part of
nihilism is fully fleshed out. They just know.

Nihilism is expressed as the posterior rationalisation of a
deeply rooted conviction that is unrealisable. The real does
not match the ideal. The ideal cannot be realised. Crisis ensues
and is then justified as certainty of nothingness, either in a
holistic sense, or for the subject of inquiry.

Here are some common examples, with the proviso that they could
be classified as over-reactions that tend to normalise over time:

The “helpless romantic” who hates every one and every thing
because they are not worthy enough and cannot deliver true
love.

The armchair revolutionary who ultimately functions as an
anti-revolutionary by dismissing in advance every attempt at
changing things as either futile or as yet another concealed
effort to preserve the status quo.

The naive Platonist who does not care about their hygiene or
what happens in the world in general, since everything is
supposed to be a fake representation of an unapproachable
domain of absolute Forms.

The key element of nihilism is not the view that nothing exists
or that nothing is real, etc. But rather that they are certain of
such a state of affairs. Unlike variants of scepticism, the
nihilist can only posit nothingness in the most dogmatic of ways
as certainty of nothingness, which itself would be a clear sign
of somethingness.

The sceptic can speak about the lack of meaning or of the
nonexistence of various forms and categories of being, by
following the analytical method alluded to in the chapter about
Godlessness. The sceptic can examine all available
knowledge/literature over a given subject to arrive at the
conclusion that fundamental issues remain unresolved and that
none of the presences that precondition the field of research
concerned are, in fact, verifiable. This would be an analytical
statement, not a conviction per se, but a reformulation of the
stock of available knowledge or a general characterisation
derived therefrom.

An analytical proposition can provide insight into hitherto
unseen items, which would colloquially mean that we learn
something new. And while that is a fair impression, analytics
remain essentially tautological. We learn to represent—to
reason, to talk about—the same things in new ways, and may have a
clearer understanding of their abstract structure as a result.

The sceptic arrives at their position by studying what is “out
there” while inquiring into the meaning or the interplay between
the subject and the object. The nihilist formulates their view of
what should be “out there” while claiming to know what is “in
here”.

Perhaps it would be fecund to posit nihilism as a type of
epistemological character; a defined way of dealing with
episteme. That would make the comparison to scepticism more
direct. A nihilist tends to express nihilistic views about every
area or topic they are concerned with. They tend to be
consistently nihilistic. Much like a sceptic tends to remain
inquisitive and dubitative in every field of study.

Nihilism “puts the cart before the horse”, as the old adage goes.
They get things in reverse, where reality must conform to the
ideal and not vice versa. They misunderstand the role of ideals
as (i) products of thought derived by discerning the common in
the multitude, and (ii) as guides to human thought and action.
The ideal is treated as the enemy of the good, rather than its
general target. Hence, the rejection of every minute improvement
or indication of positiveness, as decisively inadequate or
altogether a distraction that obscures the underlying vanity of
the whole venture, its worthlessness.

As for products of thought, it is worth addressing the Platonic
notion of Ideals in themselves. The inescapable constraint
imposed upon Platonic Idealism, or on other theories that presume
a decontextualised “mind” or purely intellectual being, is that
humans necessarily are part of the world, experiencing it through
the faculties their natural condition has endowed them with.
There is no human qua purely intellectual self, just as there can
be no absolute “I think” without connection to the underlying
natural condition.

It may then be the case that pattern is immanent. It is intrinsic
to things. The fact that humans (and not only) can discern
constants among the variables that constitute the totality of
input to the faculties of sense and the intellect may just as
well be because of a shared, built-in capacity to identify
commonalities in all that is, to eventually abstract them and
think of them as such. That means to be in a position to
identify the “abstract structure”. As such, universals are not
potentially recognisable by everyone because they must be
objectively present, but rather due to a common way of arriving
at them through the particulars. A shared process of parsing
information, if you will.

This is where the nihilist errs lamentably. The ideals they hold
are posited as objective categories that the world fails to
comply with. There is no means of easing this tension other than
examining its basic hypotheses. And, if that proves inconclusive,
then the only honest conclusion is to recognise uncertainty for
what it is and to remain open to the possibility that it might
cease to be upon further, more comprehensive research.

Pedantic and inconsequential details for the dogmatists who have
no time for leaving things unanswered…

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